Property investor slams ‘boomer bashing’

Craig Doyle, 61, from Melbourne’swest, shared how used his superannuation to invest in five properties worth about $3m on SBS Insight on Tuesday night.

However, increased interest rates, combined with land tax, council rates and unpaid rent, has led to losses for Mr Doyle and forced he and his wife to opt out of the properties.

“The pricing market for the properties we bought have dropped in the backside. We were losing $15,000 a quarter running our investment properties,” he said.

“So we had to come to the decision to opt out of all of them and we’ve lost money on them.”

Mr Doyle told the program he was fed up with young Australians’ “animosity” towards landlords and boomers, calling it “distasteful”.

“I remember the notion 25 years ago that we were going to be the biggest debt to this country because we would all be going (into) retirement and needing nursing homes,” he said.

“I find, now, that the fact that we’re not, and the fact that we are able to look after ourselves, there’s still this pent-up animosity towards us.

“I just find it distasteful.”

Having been involved in investments, Mr Doyle said he and his wife had hoped to be “grey-nomading” by now but had to shift their plans given the losses from the properties.

“All of them had body corporates, land tax, new upgrades of apartments, people not paying their rent, interest (rates) goes up three or four times a year,” he said.

“You can’t regain the money. All of a sudden, you’re churning superannuation, and it’s going out the door before it’s coming in.

“We would be grey-nomading by now, but that’s been pushed back four or five years. It is what it is.”

It comes after a rich boomer couple was labelled “selfish and privileged” after revealing they’re spending their children’s inheritance on luxury holidays.

Victorian parents Leanne and Leon Ryland have two adult sons who apparently won’t see a cent of inheritance, with the couple having spent about $170,000 on holidays since they retired.

Their goal of seeing the “wonders of the world” has so far led them to Machu Picchu in Peru, India, Sri Lanka and the Maldives, with the US being next on their agenda, they told SBS Insight.

The couple joked the only thing their two sons would inherit would be their “shelf of sh*t”, a pile of cheap trinkets from their travels.

Their jet setting comes after they saw a financial planner before they retired about four years ago after saving their whole lives.

“We’ve done all the right things by investing in property, boosting up our super, making sure that was healthy, going without a lot of things,” Ms Ryland said.

“And he said, ‘You’re crazy if you don’t retire when you can because you’ll spend most of your wealth on travel or whatever in the first 10 years and then after that it slows down’.

“It’s changing your mindset. You get into a phase now where you actually spend instead of save.”

The cashed-up boomers run a Facebook group called “SKIclub”, which stands for “spending kids inheritance”, where retirees can share travel tips.

Ms Ryland said she’s trying to convince her husband they have to “spend now, because if we don’t spend it, you know he gets it”, pointing to her son.

“We’re not going be able to spend all this money so let’s do it because in another 10 years we won’t be climbing the Great Wall of China. We won’t be going up Machu Picchu,” she said.

“We won’t be doing those things. So we’ve gotta do it now because what else is there?”

They’re not the only ones with this mindset, with Ms Ryland sharing the more they travel, the more they meet people who are “thinking the same way”.

Viewers have been quick to brand the pair as “entitled”, with one taking to social media to share their thoughts.

“SBS Insight tonight is hilarious — boomer privilege at its best & still not conscious of it. So entitled,” one person wrote on X.

“Boomers are evil … bragging about overseas holidays with no regard for the environment, spending all their money so their kids have no inheritance,” another wrote.

“Clogging health care due to their perceived entitlement for health and refusal to die. Selfish and privileged.”

Despite this, the couple’s son Alex appeared to support his parents’ decision.

“It’s their money,” he told the program.

“They’ve worked hard their entire life and invested well in order to get that money so I think they should be able to do whatever they’d like with it.”

The program also heard from other boomers, with Lorna Shuker sharing she bought a $62,000 home with her husband without help from her parents, who had never owned a home or car themselves.

“My family were very poor,” she said.

Ms Shuker described how she got into nursing and saved as much as she could, with her life now “comfortable”, having been able to buy and sell multiple million dollar properties.

She also expressed her thoughts on younger generations, who she said were not “brilliant at budgeting”.

“I think they’re the generation that sees something and they want it right now,” she said.

“And that’s why they will use services like Afterpay and live beyond their means.”